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I remember hearing a local artist grumble unhappily about paintings with letters or inscriptions: “We already have an art form with words,” he said. “It’s called literature.” So then maybe the painting above is illegitimate. In fact I’ve had trouble giving it a name. Sometimes it’s been “Text & Context in Belleville.” Sometimes it’s been “Belleville Babel.” And indeed it may have been the English Major in me who was struck by this motif; “Text and Context” is an image reflecting an intensely multicultural reality, including a socially transmitted fabric of artistic activity based on letters and words made dynamically visual.